ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of parents' and families' relationships with schools in the development of participative and socially just engagement. It explores ways parents and families who are perceived as diverse are constructed and analyse how the embodiment of difference serves as a barrier to addressing the richness of the multi-ethnic school. The impact of globalization in terms of migration has thus presented one of the greatest challenges to nation states and to their sense of identity. Global flows and transnationalism disrupt the security of the implied set of dominant values implicit in this statement, which historically have been ethnocentric: White, male and middle-class. These changes raise the question of how education systems should engage with ethnic diversity and this in turn poses the question of what set of values and whose values will be acknowledged, respected and given expression. Multiculturalism has been criticized by European governments and cited as responsible for riots and youth antagonisms.
